25 May 2011

My beloved former roommate Will used to describe things he was doing by likening the activity to a banshee. A sample sentence of this would be "Oh, I'm going to eat this like a banshee" or "I was sweating like a banshee trying to catch the streetcar." He'll probably kill me for using those real-life examples. Of course, it makes no sense to say these things, as a banshee is a screeching Irish ghost that wails when someone is about to die. They're not particularly known for gorging on cheese or perspiring through their shirts. (And if Will didn't want to kill me before, pretty sure he wants to now.)

But I can say with confidence that for the last few days, I have been cleaning like a banshee, moaning and howling as if I was going to die. My 50s Housewife Experiment, my mother's neat-freakisms and my rich Spanish and Portuguese heritage combined have failed to prepare me for the amount of work it would take to get our home presentation-worthy to put on the market. Depersonalizing, packing, decluttering, deep cleaning, moving furniture around, more deep cleaning based on what was revealed under said furniture, and then 'beautifying' took us a solid four days of dedicated work. I'll show you the pics of the result of this effort soon - probably tomorrow. All I have to say is that it had better be frigging worth it - I missed so much TV hanging out with friends because of this.

Since we've been so distracted with this banshee of a task, grocery shopping and cooking were nowhere on the radar. I honestly can't even tell you what I ate in the last few days as it was a total blur. I believe a sandwich artist was involved in at least one meal. And there were pretzels at one point. Maybe an apple.

The proof of this lack of food shopping can be found by looking in my fridge at the collection of edibles I like to call This Is Why You Have Acid Reflux:

So, condiments galore. Then assorted pickled peppers. And pickles. And Red Bull. And beer. And Pizza Pizza creamy garlic dipping sauce. And Parmesan cheese. Yup, all the food groups are well represented there. Before people come to look at our house I'm going to get a few things (oh, like, VEGETABLES) so that anyone who spots our fridge contents doesn't immediately think bad things about what our toilet encounters day in and day out.

This 1959 General Electric ad showcases all the great food you can store in it - like "MEATS", milk, cake, Coca Cola and a mystery bowl of something green and pink that you'll surely horrify your family with:

Any guesses? I'd like to believe that's just the design of her casserole dish, but I think we all know better by now, having experienced the wackiness that is 1950s cooking. I'm thinking it's a cabbage salad with frankfurters that is called something misrepresentative like "Deli Delight".

But even further down the ad is where the true WTF Gold lies:

Below the ridiculously large watermelon and below the (Strawberry? Ham? Strawberry and Ham?) mold is a fuck ton of dairy. 25 bottles - an incomprehensible amount for a family with a 15 cubic foot fridge. Did Little Johnny sneak a bottle of milk behind the school and now mom is going to teach him a lesson by making him drink a whole flat of them in one go? Is this some kind of sinister Hitchcockian message left by the milkman? I don't know, but if any family - and I don't care if you've bred like Duggars rabbits and have a boatload of children - drank that much dairy, I can guarantee you you'd all be bunged up. Like banshees.

Search for Intelligence

Who's Smashing The Keyboard?

My name is Jen and I look like that picture at all times. I enjoy appetizers as entrees, fountains choreographed to music and television shows intended for teenage girls. Oh - and I really dislike it when people spell it "Jenn"; it's practically a phobia.